We use a clocking in and out machine. Can we round up or

Customer Question

We use a clocking in and out machine. Can we round up or down for the employees clocking out time? Example if they click out at 2.08 do we have the right to only pay them until 2.00? Also would it be a 15 minute block or half hour?Thanks

Hi Ben. We work in a pub/restaurant environment and the employees are paid hourly. We collect their clocking in cards once a month and add up their hours for payroll. They are sometimes clocking out at 7 mins past or 25 past when their shift finished on the hour.

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Many thanks for your patience. Whilst you can apply a system which rounds up/down the time the employees work you must ensure that it is applied fairly and that ideally it is in the employees’ contract. By being applied fairly, I would say that you must ensure you do not just round down the time, but also round it up. It is up to you as to what blocks of time you decide to round up the time to, be it 5 mins, 10 mins, 15, mins or 30 mins. Obviously the smaller the block the less likelihood is there of any disputes arising because the employees will not be ‘losing’ as much time. So try to make it as precise as possible and not always round down so as to appear that you are always cutting down the employees;’ time worked.

Regardless of the above, you can make it clear that there is no time paid for working overtime, unless you have both specifically agreed to it. The law does not entitle employees to get overtime pay until it is a contractual right or paid at the employer’s discretion so if someone is contracted to work specific hours and they are not asked to do overtime by you, then you can just pay them for the contracted hours, even if they have clocked out later than when they were due to finish.

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